


the ships used to fly above

by coarseCorsair



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canonical Character Death, Gen, background Aria/Jacqui, how do languages work in c/w? no one knows, none of them are above being weebs, the hieron anime, well not in a major way but still
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-18
Updated: 2020-01-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:14:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22278457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coarseCorsair/pseuds/coarseCorsair
Summary: The passage of time was a strange thing in the Golden Branch. There were weeks that felt like years, and years that seemed to pass by in a matter of minutes. Some things didn’t seem to change at all, remaining ever constant, the axioms that governed the universe. Mako Trig didn’t usually concern himself with matters such as these, but he’d been thinking about them a lot recently.Mako, Aria, their friendship throughout the years.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7
Collections: Secret Samol 2019





	the ships used to fly above

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ThePinkPunk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThePinkPunk/gifts).



> kind of went overboard with the prompt but i hope that is okay! enjoy!!!
> 
> alternate title: aria joie in the age of mechanical reproduction

The journey to September was proving to be awfully long, with very few moments of genuine levity along the way. At least Jacqui was there; she was surprisingly kind for a professional assassin who had only just recently nearly killed her, but Aria wasn’t complaining. Having someone new to talk to helped when you were stranded in the cold, uncaring depths of space. A genuine human connection could make up for a lot of things.

Aria was lying on her bed, trying (and failing) to fall asleep, when she saw Mako’s silhouette walking through the hallway.

“Aren’t you supposed to be sleeping?” she asked, rubbing her eyes.

“Can’t,” he answered. “Anyways, I found this just sorta laying around.” He pulled out some sort of miniature storage device. It looked positively ancient: there were a few dents on it, and it was marked with the emblem of what seemed to be some sort of OriCon insignia, though it was hard to tell, since it had nearly faded away. Who even used these things anymore?

“And by found do you mean ‘took’?”

“Uh...yeah, but whatever. Wanna see what’s on this thing?”

It wasn’t as if there was anything more interesting to do on the ship, so why not? “Sure,” she said, setting up her laptop so they could see just what exactly was on the device.

Mako plugged it in, only to discover a single folder, filled entirely with episodes from some sort of animated series. 

The first thing that the two of them noticed was that the video quality was noticeably off - just how old was this? The translation wasn’t all that great either (almost as if it were translated from Diasporan by a teenage hobbyist), but they could make out the gist of the plot: something about a group of adventurers heading off to a tower. Oh, and a tiny skeleton man was there, for some reason.

Despite all the difficulties and technical setbacks, it was still enthralling, and in just a few hours they’d finished watching all of it.

“Wait, that’s it?” said Mako with resignation in his voice, his shoulders slumped.

“That, that can’t be it, right? What about all the plot threads? The whole thing with the paladin? The warrior and the empress? There’s gotta be more, right?”

“Do you want me to go and check? Wait, no, shit, I can’t really connect to the Mesh right now, yeah.” A thought quickly formed in his head. “Actually...I did see another device of his lying around somewhere. I guess I could check that out?”

“Another device of his?” The answer came to her in an instant. “...you took it from Orth, didn’t you?”

“You two talking about something?” said Jacqui, who must have been standing there for a solid minute, at least. The interruption nearly made Mako fall over backwards, but he managed to balance himself.

“We were just, uh...talking about anime?” said Mako. 

Her eyes lit up. “What’s it about? Is it good? Can I watch?” 

“I mean, we just fini-”

“Totally!” Aria said with a smile on her face.

“Cool,” Jacqui replied as she took a seat right next to Aria on the edge of the bed. 

“Yeah, I think I’m just gonna leave now…” Mako said as he slowly evacuated himself from Aria’s room, realizing the situation that he was in.

“You know, that guy’s really weird.”

“Mako’s a good guy, you just have to get used to him.”

“I get where you’re coming from, but I feel like he’s gonna put you in a real bad spot sooner or later.”

“And you haven’t?”

“Well, yeah.”

“C’mon, there’s anime to watch,” Aria said before playing the first episode again.

* * *

The Kingdom Come used to be home, or at least the closest thing to a home that someone like Aria Joie could have. It provided a sense of stability, comfort and safety in a world that was solely lacking in such things. Now it felt different, wrong somehow. It might have been the exact same ship with the exact same paint job and in a purely literal sense nothing had changed, but there was a noticeable absence that Aria preferred not to think about.

She thought about it regardless. Loss was an ugly, ugly thing — a handful of weeks couldn’t simply make it go away. It wasn’t at all like the films she’d seen as a child, there were no tearful goodbyes, no noble sacrifices, people died and you were left to deal with the fallout, pick up where they left off. She’d been told all about heroes, yes, but nothing about the people who lived with them, nothing about the ones whose bones and blood and tears and sweat had paved the ground upon which these titans walked.

And yet something in her, something in the very core of her being, refused to fully accept that. Of course real life could never be as neat and tidy as she’d imagined it all those years ago. Deep down, though, she was still the same little kid that grew up idolizing Jace Rethal, the same kid who dreamed of clear, blue skies, far bluer than the ocean, and the stars beyond them. She would adapt, become stronger, bolder, more decisive: she would become a true leader, she would change everything. _The world will never break me again._

“You, uh, said we should meet up?” called out a familiar voice, signaling the end of her contemplations; the universe had a funny way of doing things like that, she mused.

Aria turned around to face Mako, who was casually leaning up against the entrance to her quarters. At a glance he seemed like his usual self, dressed in his normal clothing, seemingly unaffected by everything that had happened on September, yet there was a tenseness to him that she couldn’t quite pin down.

“Yeah. I just...I just wanted to talk, y’know?”

Mako couldn’t read minds, but it was obvious that this was about more than just having a heart to heart conversation with a friend. Things were changing, that much was obvious, and there was no room for the Chime in this new landscape. The scars left by Rigour were yet to heal, and to help mend the world they had to take up responsibilities, even him. An opportunity, no matter how short, to cherish that which he was soon about to leave behind was a welcome one indeed.

“About…?”

“September.”

“You mind being a little more specific?”

“Oh, uh, the whole clone thing,” she said, her cheeks turning ever so slightly red.

Mako was resting his chin on his palm, seemingly oblivious to his surroundings and quite possibly reality itself. “What about them?”

“It’s just...you seem so nonchalant about them. Even more than usual, I mean.”

Mako shrugged his shoulders by instinct. “I mean, I’m a clone, they’re also clones, what’s there to get?”

“You don’t find it strange? Not even a little bit? All this time, you thought you were the only ‘you’, but now you aren’t.”

“I mean, yeah, but I’m me,” he answered, “and the fact that there’s now a bunch of other guys that happen to look like me isn’t gonna change that. Same goes with you, you’re still Aria Joie despite all that contract stuff, aren’t you?”

“Well, Mako Trig isn’t owned by EarthHome, is he?” His reasoning made sense - up to a certain point—yet something about it bugged her; it was true for him, but it wasn’t true for her. Her name was no longer her own, her image was no longer her own, her voice was no longer her own. She was a commodity, as easily bought and sold as any other. How could she continue being Aria Joie?

“No, I’m not,” he admitted. “But, I mean, like, for the longest time I thought I was the only me.” He paused, taking a moment to sit down on a nearby chair and breathe. “Then Larry happened. Then September happened.” Another pause, another breath. “Turns out, I’m not special at all. Turns out, I’m grown in a vat and every choice I thought I’d made up to this point was made for me.” Mako wasn’t used to being vulnerable like this, but it was oddly comforting; freeing, even. “They don’t own me anymore, though. And they don’t own you either.”

“Thanks.”

“No problem,” he attempted to say before being interrupted by Aria hugging him. “Wow, you really needed that, huh?”

“Shut up,” she said, giving Mako a light punch on the shoulder.

* * *

The passage of time was a strange thing in the Golden Branch. There were weeks that felt like years, and years that seemed to pass by in a matter of minutes. Some things didn’t seem to change at all, remaining ever constant, the axioms that governed the universe. Mako Trig didn’t usually concern himself with matters such as these, but he’d been thinking about them a lot recently. Bit by bit, age was starting to take its toll on him; he could’ve sworn he’d seen his first grey hair a few days back.

Mako stood in front of the door to Aria’s new place, which was surprisingly austere for someone of her stature: a simple apartment building no different from the other ones in the complex. He entered without announcement, only to discover that he was clearly late (and definitely not in the fashionable manner)—everyone else was already there. Orth and AuDy were having a conversation in one corner of the room, while Jacqui was telling Jill about one of their old adventures in another.

There wasn’t much time for Mako to get a good view of the surroundings, however, for he was quickly ambushed by a little girl. 

“Mako!” she said with a big, toothy grin, one front tooth notably missing.

“Aw, hey there, Cassie! How’s it going?” Mako said as he pulled her in for a hug, tousling her hair. “You do anything fun recently?”

“I made mama’s computer go boom yesterday.”

Mako winced as if he’d stubbed his toe before breaking into laughter. “Lemme guess, they blamed me?”

“Yep,” Cassie said with a quick nod.

Their conversation was cut short due to the fact that it was Cassie’s bedtime already. She said her goodbyes to Mako and left for the bedroom, but not before giving Jacqui a kiss on the cheek (a kiss that Jacqui happily reciprocated).

Aria entered the room soon afterwards, wine glass in her hand. Age had begun to take its effect on her as well; sure, on the outside there were no drastic differences barring some grey streaks in her hair and rather prominent crow’s feet, but the way she carried herself was quite different, less energetic, yet also more confident. “Sorry I kept you waiting,” she said.

“No worries, I was pretty late myself, so it evens out. And uh, sorry about the whole computer thing.”

Aria sighed. Some things never changed. “It’s okay. Just try to teach Cassie some less explode-y things next time, maybe?”

“But that’s no fun!” he objected. “Besides, she’ll grow out of it eventually. That’s what kids do...I think.”

“Unlike you?”

“Hey, I only do that kinda stuff occasionally.”

“You’re right though, she’s...she’s actually growing pretty fast. Feels like only a few weeks ago she was just learning how to walk. Now she understands me better than I do. Sometimes she really reminds me of them.”

There was an uncomfortable silence in the air, hanging over the two like a dark cloud.

“Do you think they’d be proud of her? Of us? Of what we’ve accomplished?” Aria asked. Mako knew that Cassander’s passing hit her hard especially, so he let her continue talking. “Do you ever wonder if things could have gone differently?”

“All the time. There’s days where I just lay awake in bed, thinking about all the times I fucked up.” He was pretty sure he hadn’t told anyone about this before now. Sometimes he still thought about Tower, wishing for just one more dance. “But I don’t think it’s what they would want for you. You just make the best of what you’ve got, even if it’s not a lot. And I think we’ve done an alright job, honestly. Rigour lost and we won. We’re here and it isn’t. Like, it’s not gonna be easy, but at least we won’t have to deal with some big evil robot thing.”

“Now,” he said with a smile on his face, “you want me to get you some punch?”

“Yeah, I’d really like that,” she said, ready to embrace the new world and all the possibilities that it offered.

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from the sermon of sister rust by jack de quidt  
> the general concept of jacqui and aria having a kid named cassie shamelessly taken from press f/f to pay respects by kismetNemesis  
> beta'd by the extremely lovely awindingstair, who provided an absurd amount of excellent feedback


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